Balta1701

With where their system currently is, they have one shot to turn things around by 2026 without trading Robert and that’s to nail a trade of Dylan Cease. Whats ironic though is that much like this season, the more they try to shortcut things, the more they convince themselves they’re super close, the farther they will be. If they’re sitting around saying “you never know what things will look like in 2025” rather than being honest about how deep the hole is, they’ll just keep digging.

If you go by rankings wasn’t he the second piece?

....ok?

The White Sox are going to have to spend money just to fill out a roster. They literally don't have pitchers. Take a look at the prices that pitchers are getting this trade deadline. If you have a guy who comes out healthy and has a good half, who is also affordable, they are useful at the trade deadline next year. If you sign 3 or 4 guys, they're not all going to be good, but hopefully one or two of them are, and those guys will be tradable. Just don't make the Benintendi mistake of signing someone to 4 years or the Clevinger mistake of signing someone without an appropriate background check. There's lots of possible names. Hyun-Jin Ryu, Luis Severino, Frankie Montas, Sean Manaea, Noah Syndergaard, Carlos Carrasco, Wade Miley, there's all sorts.

I think he showed he wasn’t anywhere near conditioned to be pitching in the playoffs. He lasted 6 innings. That’s what happens when you go from 0 to 100 with limited conditioning.

Now work with me here Mr. Hahn, do you think the guy you just described is ready to face big league pitching?

How many games did Tennessee play of college baseball after March 3 of 2020?

If you think this sounds ok I want you to try something for me. If you have an exercise program, shut it down entirely for 3 months, then go three months without running. Then, you have a week to train before a competition where all you will be doing is running sprints. Does that sound like a sensible strategy or do you think that suddenly shooting up to sprinting with no buildup might risk an injury? Crochet threw 3 innings in college before the 2020 season was canceled. The next thing you knew, after not facing live hitters since the summer of 2019, he was facing big league hitters in the playoffs throwing as hard as he could. I don’t care how effective your work is at home or at the alternate site, that ramp up is absolutely insane. Most human bodies can’t do that, no matter how athletic they are.

Most of the time even with guys who wind up relievers things work out best if you work them as starters in the minors for a while. At the very least, you’re working the 20 year olds arm, building up muscle strength, allowing them to practice their secondary pitches, and creating muscle memory. Crochet was a lefty throwing 102, he was probably going to go down for TJS at some point, but that’s no excuse for putting him on this insane progression. Also, you can’t hold this shoulder injury against him. The White Sox raced him back faster than basically any pitcher from TJS in years because we needed that sweet orgasmic middle relief for our wonderful 2023 team. Him getting hurt was basically guaranteed. Saying he has two arm injuries feels like blaming him for getting in the way of the bullet that the White Sox fired at him.

You’re trying to shift blame onto Tony to spare the real villain, Rick Hahn, who always does this s%*# but who you are determined to avoid blaming. Rick Hahn’s actions aren’t Rick Hahn’s fault™. People are so determined to protect him that I’ve been using that trademark logo on that line for 8 years.

Tony also clearly brought Crochet back into the bullpen in 2023 thirteen months after TJS and after a whopping 6 rehab innings. It’s all Tony, he’s been making the bullpen decisions for precisely 11 seasons. No one else can be blamed here.

Plus Tony went back in time to draft Crochet and converted him into a reliever.

Michael Kopech absolutely came back from 2020 as a guy who needed innings desperately. In 2018, his control was terrible for the first half of the year, I will ask you to go find the game in June where he had half a dozen walks in under 5 innings. Then, he got into a groove with his control for 6 starts or so before he was called up, and then his elbow blew. Aside from this injury, this looked like a guy with promise, but who benefited A LOT from getting innings. What did the white Sox do post injury? Denied him innings, put him straight into the bullpen. F*** innings for development. Hahn is a god. 2021 title worth everything! The kid in Oliver Twist who says “please sir I want some more”? He asked Hahn “please sir I want to build my arm muscles” and Hahn’s laugh in reply set off car alarms across Illinois. Michael Kopech’s worst enemy is Rick Hahn. He demanded things that would destroy Kopech’s career and cost him hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for his 2021 bullpen season. This set of decisions destroyed his career exactly as expected. Now you are blaming Kopech for the decisions made by Rich Hahn. There is no better way to serve Hahn than this defense.

Yes it was totally a Tony LaRussa bullpen fetish. It’s not like we have any reason to think Hahn orgasms at the concept of middle relief. After all, it was clearly LaRussa in 2021 who: Tried to move Sale to the 2012 bullpen Signed Robertson to one of the richest reliever contracts Signed Ohman Signed Duke Drafted Burdi Traded for Ynoa Signed Jennings Brought Fulmer up from AA as a reliever when he had an ErA near 5 Traded for Colome Signed Herrera Drafted Crochet in round 1 and immediately put him in the bullpen Put Rodon into the bullpen Obviously all the bullpen moves are LaRussas fault as I have no examples of Hahn wasting unbelievable resources on the bullpen when LaRussa wasn’t here. Aside from the above.

Quintana (and Veal) were full minor league free agents, so they had cleared waivers entirely. It looks like he was a 40 man roster casualty and the White Sox signed him in Mid November to a 40 man roster contract. (it won’t let me embed a link on my phone: https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-xpm-2011-11-10-chi-sox-sign-lefthanders-veal-and-quintana-to-minor-league-deals-20111110-story.html)

Totally believable statement: Garret Crochet would be a top of the rotation starter in 2024 if the White Sox hadn’t ever tried to make him a reliever. They cost him $200 million+ for a middle reliever in 2021.

No I’m much more expecting that we will wind up spending $5 million on Martin Maldonado for -0.6 WAR.

Who is the second catcher next year? If your answer is a free agent I will ask why you want to spend actual money on that spot.

Especially since we are bringing along Lee next year presumably I think there’s lots of reasons to have a tolerable defensive catcher on the roster. Especially pre arb. Unless Perez is out of options, let him hang around at Charlotte and be the first injury fillin.

That's quite a bit lower than I'd have expected. They must really be quite down on him.

This is about as good as you could do for these players. Whether this will actually make a dent in the White Sox's big league club is up to the future and the organization to decide.

They were clearly going to have to spend some money just to field a team next year. They've filled the catcher's role well enough, but they still have only 2 starters - maybe you can push a guy up aggressively next year, but both Nastrini and Bush are down at AA, and Bush has only thrown 30 innings down there this year, so neither of them looks like a guy you'd want to count on as a rotation piece in 2024. Just to tread water, they still need 3 starters, and now they've cleared out their bullpen so they absolutely are going to be finding 4 or 5 pitchers somewhere. It would also be nice if we knew who the 6th starter would be for once.

It was @Harold's Leg Lift a few days ago who said Hahn had been sidelined and would be relieved at the end of the year. I'm skeptical myself but I'll let you two fight that out.

Apparently his 2019 surgery was for Thoracic Outlet Syndrome and I'm not expert enough to offer more details than this. https://theathletic.com/3377581/2022/06/23/dodgers-nick-nastrini/

At the start of the year, the Marlins were 18th with #13, #61, and #67. the Twins were 19th with #31, #45, and #88. After those two teams, you get to teams with 1-2 prospects on the list. Late teens/early 20s seems like an appropriate estimate.